Game Concept

Schuriken is a game about ninja stars and katana trying to cut your fingers. Touch and keep your finger on the screen while not trying to get hit by endless amounts of ninja stars or katana. Move up in the panels to gain a higher multiplier. Unlock new pages (levels) to unravel the story.

My Contribution

This is the first solo project of Fried Candle. The game's art, design and programming is done by me.

Game Design

With Schuriken I wanted to give the player the feeling the shuriken and katana are directly attacking the player’s finger. So the human playing the game is the player character of the game. Later I added the whole comic/manga aesthetic to make it feel that the manga is alive and does not want you reading it. I was planning to add a story in the manga told over the several pages (levels). This, in combination with hypercasual gameplay populair in mobile games, I tried to differentiate my game from the others; A hypercasual game with a mysterious story.

Level Design

When I chose the theme of comic/manga I could experiment with elements of those mediums. I quickly fell in love with the panels manga have. I also liked the idea of different effects happening when switching panels. Because the shuriken and katana always fall from the top of the screen, it is harder to have your finger closer to the top of the screen. This is where the manga panels come into play. If you go up in panels, your multiplier goes up too; risk/reward.
With it being a manga, there are also different pages. With each page I can tell a new part of the story aswell as play with the size of the panels. The higher your score, the further you get in the story, the harder the panels make the game. In later levels some parts of the screen are obscured by borders or push the playfield up by obscuring the bottom.